If the Looney Tunes team had played with plastic blocks that snap together,
The Lego Movie is the type of surreal subversion that it might have made.

The guys behind the original
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, have turned a
90-minute exercise in product placement into a trippy clarion call for creativity: Don’t follow “
the instructions” of these fiendishly simple Danish building blocks.

The story, if you can call it that, is a riff on
Tron, an alternate world whose denizens lead an assault on conformity. The characters —
ranging from a blind wizard (voiced by Morgan Freeman) and a “master builder” ninja (Elizabeth
Banks) to Batman (a growling Will Arnett), an evil overlord named President Business (Will Ferrell)
and his Bad Cop henchman (Liam Neeson) — make the case that those who can improvise, invent and see
the world differently are “the special.”

Mild-mannered Emmet (Chris Pratt) is just another Lego construction worker. He is a model
citizen in a planned society who follows the rules.

Everybody loves the same TV show (Where Are My Pants?). Everybody’s “jam” is the same song (Everything Is AWEsome).

Emmet stumbles onto an object of prophecy, “the piece of resistance.” That must mean he is the
chosen one, “the special.” So Wyldstyle (Banks) tries to help him get that “piece” to where it can
stop President Business from destroying the many Lego universes, from Bricksville to the Old West
to Middle Zealand.

Jerky computer animation vividly mimics the shiny look and tactile feel of Lego blocks. The
movie shows off the blocks as “the Original Transformers,” clickable into a variety of shapes, from
sailing ships to the plastic sea they sail on.

Slapstick violence befalls the clueless Emmet and those who help him, “master builders” honored
for their crazy-quilt Lego designs.

Batman pitches in. The Green Lantern (Jonah Hill) doesn’t.

Out to stop Emmet and crew at every turn is the furious and sadistic Good Cop / Bad Cop, a
two-faced police Lego voiced by Neeson.

The writers note how kids slip small objects into their Lego play. Golf balls, Q-Tips, 9-volt
batteries and X-Acto knives become exalted props.

The animation is a plastic-coated blur at times. Many of the jokes will fly over the heads of
the intended viewers, and the sermonizing about being creative gets repetitive.

From its slapstick physics to its theology (“The Man Upstairs”), though,
The Lego Movie amuses and never fails to leave viewers — especially adults — a little
dazzled at the demented audacity of it all.